Laertes is an independent press committed to literary translation — to the furthering of that particular art. Our aim is also to relay works from far and wide, in any genre, that render the full human weight.

Martin McKinsey

Martin McKinsey has translated stories, novels, and poetry from Modern Greek into English. In 1996 in recognition of his work on The Courtyard, a novel by Andreas Franghias, he received The Special Greek State Prize for Translation. (It was the first time the category was thus acknowledged.) Later, the Pavlos Zanas Translation Prize was conferred by the Greek Writers Association. Martin has published translations by the surrealist poet and painter Nikos Engonopoulos, and by Yannis Ritsos, Greece’s best-known postwar poet, notably Late into the Night: The Last Poems of Yannis Ritsos for the Oberlin Field Translation Series, as well as two collections of co-translations for Red Dragonfly Press. A further anthology of Cavafy’s prose, to be titled Becoming Cavafy, is near completion.